She urged action by Congress and state legislatures. An estimated 12 million children under age 5 are in nonparental child care each week.
The association reviewed policies and regulations for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Defense Department, which ranked a decisive number one overall and led both subcategories -- one measuring standards that are in place, the second measuring how vigorously the standards are enforced.
"Standards are meaningless without oversight," Smith said. "The Defense Department has good enforcement, and that has brought their program to a much higher level."
Following the military atop the rankings were Illinois, New York, Maryland, Washington, Oklahoma, Michigan, North Dakota, Tennessee, Minnesota, and Vermont.
Idaho ranked last; the next lowest scores were for Louisiana, Nebraska, Kentucky, California, and Kansas. Massachusetts ranked 18th.
Criteria for the rankings included caseloads for center inspectors, frequency of inspections, health and safety requirements, background checks, staff qualifications, and activities offered to children.
The report, "We Can Do Better," said eight states do not even require annual inspections of child care centers, let alone conduct them quarterly as Smith's association recommends. The association also advises that each inspector have no more than 50 centers to monitor; the report said 21 states have caseloads of more than 140 per inspector.
Regarding staff, the report said 21 states have no minimum educational requirement for child care teachers; it said only New Jersey and the Defense Department require center directors to have a bachelor's degree.
The military's system, which has expanded and improved dramatically over the past 15 years, encompasses more than 740 facilities worldwide with spaces for 184,000 children. Its training and safety standards are considered state-of-the-art.
